Part III 12th Image / 7th Day No. 30 URIEL (TENOR): RECITATIVE WITH ACCOMPANIMENT In rosy mantle appears, by tunes sweet awak`d, the morning young and fair. From the celestial vaults pure harmony descends on ravished earth. Behold the blissful pair, where hand in hand they go! Their flaming looks express what feels the grateful heart. A louder praise of God their lips shall utter soon. Then let our voices ring, united with their song!

PART III 7th Day After the telling of creation the Bible continues: Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.´´ (Gen. 2:1–4a). In contrast, the third part of The Creation does not deal with God`s rest and his blessing of the seventh day, but Adam and Eve, how they give thanks to God and are blissful. In the beginning, this was the most highly recognised part.
12th Image The 12th image encompasses the first and second scene of the third part. In the first scene Uriel depicts how at sunrise, another symbol of the dawn of a new era, Adam and Eve walk hand in hand, filled with natural piety. It is likely that the libretto intentionally fails to mention the Garden of Eden, as it features the tree of life, the snake and the fall of man, which of course do not appear in The Creation. One could just as well recall the golden age of ancient mythology, the idyllic Arcadia of the ancient world and of Renaissance poetry and art, or Rousseau`s postulated natural state of simple, unspoilt man. According to the libretto, we are to imagine a host of silent angels´´ next to and addressed by Uriel. In the following scene Adam and Eve offer their morning praises to God and summon all of creation to sing its praises. They follow Milton`s Morning Hymn, which was set to music multiple times in the 18th century, but ultimately Psalm 148 and the three young boys` song of praise in the furnace of blazing fire (Book of Daniel). No. 30 URIEL (TENOR): RECITATIVE WITH ACCOMPANIMENT In rosy mantle Instrumentation: T; 3 solo Fl, 2 Ob, 2 Bn, 2 Hn, Str – E major ... G major, largo
The key of E major, which had only been heard in No. 3 (bars 41ff.) and No. 19 (bars 36ff. and 63ff.), becomes the primary key here. The tritone interval to the B major of No. 29 is conceivably the greatest and is consequently well-suited to give us a sense of the remote origin of the sweet sound´´ that van Swieten demanded from Haydn`s work: Here a somewhat longer introduction expressing sweet sound and pure harmony could lead into the recitative from which the accompaniment to the first six versus could subsequently be taken. More regard should be paid to harmony than to melody, and it should merely hover or be spun out.´´ Haydn heeded the recommendation, but instead of subordinating the melody to the harmony,´´ he made it the focal point using the spun out´´ but rhythmically differentiated tempo of largo. He achieved the hovering´´ and pure harmony´´ through instrumentation with three solo flutes in a high and close position, thus producing a musical image´´ which could be organically inserted into any work of the Early Romantic period.´´ The seeds of the key, register and modulation at the start are found at a position in the andante movement (example a) in Haydn`s Piano Sonata No. 17 from 1767 and are unfolded here to their consummate beauty. A sketch of a score contains the almost definitive substance until bar 13, yet still lacks the opening E major chord. The string accompaniment of bars 2-7 (first quarter) arose even later, as revisions in the earliest scores show. Originally, the flutes played on their own in these bars. After the initial performances, Haydn came up with the idea to facilitate listeners` reception of the three-part flute movement: in low register the harmonic steps forming the basis of the movement are marked p and pizzicato for violins and string basses. Then with the shortened repetition in bars 30-33 of the recitative we are able to hear the ethereal sound of the flutes without the support of the strings. Besides the chords of the strings, further on in the recitative a lyrical motif symbolising the happy couple´´ is heard, played as a small two-part interlude first by the two horn-players, then, with support from the violins, the bassoons and finally the oboes and violins. In the outline the lyrical interludes are still missing, and in the vocals there were no expressive melismas on pure harmony´´ and grateful heart´´ yet. Source: FEDER, Georg: Joseph Haydn. Die Schöpfung (Kassel 1999), Verlag Bärenreiter.